Fated Ones
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: Three months after her nineteenth birthday she cuts the mark out of her skin: Kate Beckett doesn't want to be a fated one any longer. The day he stumbles into her precinct, she's nearly doubled over by the pain in her side as her mark returns with a vengeance. - pre-s1/s1 soulmates AU.
1. Chapter 1

**This little idea just came to me tonight out of the blue. Hopefully it's better than I think it is because I'm totally out of practice when it comes to writing Castle fic and I've never written anything quite like this before. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours. Definitely Milmar's. **

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The mark appears at dawn on her eighteenth birthday, the pain of it burning into her skin pulling her from sleep, and she stumbles down the hallway to her parent's room in her fit of excitement. She knows it's a blessing, not everyone was lucky enough to get the mark. Her mother's cold fingers trail over the wounded skin as she traces the letters that spelled out the name of her daughter's soulmate and the girl giggles, giddy with the idea of love being on her horizon. "Oh Katie," her mother croons in the early morning light. "I am so happy for you."

Three months after her nineteenth birthday she takes a knife and drags it through that stupid mark. Blood oozes from the wound and she smears it with her fingers, covering up the name of her fated one. Three weeks ago they buried her mother and nothing felt even close to fine; her father hadn't been sober in more than a month, since they came home that night to Detective Raglan waiting for them. He had slipped into the bottle slowly until he was fully ensconced and Kate wasn't sure if she'd ever see him come out of it alive.

"Love," she scoffs. "What a fucking joke." With her father's hunting knife, she adds a second cut to further obscure the name scrawled across her ribs. She's careful, not stupid; it's a very topical wound, she's not suicidal, but like hell is she ever going open her heart up to that kind of wound ever again Her father's too drunk to care when his underage daughter pours herself a tumbler full of whiskey and sips at it to the dull the pain of the wound hidden under her shirt and several layers of bandaging. If only she could cut her mother out of her father, maybe then he'd be able to heal.

The wound heals, scars over, Richard scrawled in flowing script with two thick angry lines scratched through his name across the side of her ribcage. She pushes it out of her mind, not wasting valuable time thinking about a man she would never look for, never allow herself to love if he by chance stumbled into her life. Instead she throws herself into her new goal: finding her mother's killer.

In the academy, she hones herself into a killer – no feelings, no letting anyone past her walls. She's not celibate. There are men and she takes them with a control she'll never surrender. But she never allows herself to waste tears on them when they leave in the morning. One or two stick around for awhile but eventually she drives them away and that's fine, it suits her better this way. Alone. Solitude. Her father still lost to the siren call of alcohol and her mother six feet under now grown over dirt.

Kate Beckett only cares about one thing: revenge.

Roy Montgomery pulls her back, just ever so slightly – just enough to keep her at bay, keep her from diving headfirst into a situation that will get her killed. The man cares and she's not sure why but he helps her. Helps her step away from her mother's murder. Helps her father get clean.

She's still angry and closed off but she's not driven to the point of digging her own grave any longer.

And then he walks into her precinct.

Or, rather, she drags him there in handcuffs.

Richard freaking Castle.

She's in the middle of interrogating him because those murders from his books are happening all over her city and she'll be damned if she doesn't get to the bottom of it when all of a sudden she's doubled over in pain. Esposito comes in and takes over for her while Ryan drags her from the room and she protests, she can complete the interview, but then she's nearly brought to her knees by the pain in her side. Breaking away from Ryan, she rushes into the bathroom and locks the door before hiking up her shirt to observe her side. "No," she groans as she rubs her hand over her side. "No. No. No."

The scars have been erased and the faded ink has been replaced with new and vibrant black: Richard, in bold lettering. Fucking figures, she thinks, that her mother's favorite author and her potential suspect would be her damned fated one.

When the boys have cleared him of any wrong doing, she signs his release papers and is escorting him to the elevators when he quickly pushes her into the stairwell and she's grateful for the landing that keeps her from tumbling down the steps. "Hey," she growls. "You just got cleared of murder but I'll gladly arrest your ass for assaulting a cop."

"It's your mark," he tells her as he undoes the buttons of his shirt.

She frowns. "Do you want me to add indecent exposure to your rap sheet?"

"It's already on there," he tells her. Then he pulls his button down to one side and she sees the mark, her breath hitches in her throat and she stumbles back from him. "Katherine. That's your name, right? Detective Katherine Beckett."

"Fuck off," she orders and tries to shove past him.

"Your mark says Richard, doesn't it?" He doesn't move. He's a brick wall.

"Don't have one."

He smirks. "You're a terrible liar, detective."

"So what if I have one," she protests, aggravated and wondering if Montgomery would fire her if she shot the writer. "I don't believe in love."

"You're marked." He looks gleeful and she wants to smack the smirk from his scruffy face. He reaches to brush the hair from her face but she steps back with arms crossed over her abdomen. "We're fated ones. How can you not believe in that? It's written on your skin!"

"Look, Ri-... Castle." Kate sighs. "Even if I'm your fated one... You don't want me to be, trust me. I'm a human tornado. Your best bet is to just get the hell out of my way. Go find one of the unmarked one and make their dreams come true, your dreams come true, because it'll never happen with me."

He observes her for a moment and it's unnerving but she doesn't step away this time when he steps up to her and brushes his lips over the shell of her ear. "We'll see about that, detective."

"No," she corrects him. "We won't."

But she's not even a little surprised, though totally aggravated, to see him waiting in her captain's office the following morning and the most aggravating part is that she's not totally upset at the idea of him being there.


	2. Chapter 2

**After nearly every single review asked for more of this universe, I decided that I had to continue it. Please forgive any mistakes, I'm currently battling a raging case of bronchitis but I wanted to get this out there while there was an interest. Candle (Sick and Tired) by The White Tie Affair would not be the worst song ever to listen to while reading this chapter as it inspired a lot of what I wrote. **

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Not everyone is lucky enough to receive a mark; in fact they're rare enough that some people don't believe they exist at all, an old wives tale passed down as caution in love from a long gone generation. Jim and Johanna Beckett both had the marks and little Katie had envied them from a very early age, well aware that there was no guarantee that one would ever show up on her person. There was little rhyme and reason to the arrival of the marks; some people got them as early as thirteen, with a pimply faced crush on the girl three seats on the bus, and sometimes they didn't show up until a person was pushing senior citizenship. Her mother had always told her it was fate when the marks arrived, they lead you to the right person at the right time.

As a child Kate Beckett was wildly infatuated by the idea that somewhere out there was your perfect other, someone out there looking forward to meeting you too. Then her mother had died and her entire reality came crashing down like a tower of cards. Watching what losing her mother did to her father, she had steadfastly decided that the mark didn't matter, she didn't want love if it ended like that. She didn't want to love someone when they could be taken from you in the blink of an eye.

Then Richard Castle waltzed into her life like it was his own personal playground.

"Can I shoot him now or do I have to wait until he's done with the paperwork?" The look the lawyer shot her was silencing and she shrugged as she sunk against the wall with arms crossed over her chest.

The writer looked positively giddy and she wanted to smack his scruffy face; he was her friggin' fated one and maybe she could wrap her mind around that if he wasn't forcing his way into her life, into her job, where he could very likely find a fate similar to her mother's. Her phone ringing pulled her from her sulking as she got the address and basic information on a murder in midtown; Castle looked up at her like a kid in a candy store as he made for the door. "We have a case?"

"I have case," she told him with a smirk. "You have paperwork."

He looks like she kicked his puppy and she's not above the power trip it gives her when she struts her way out of the precinct to make her way to the crime scene. The boys are waiting for her when she arrives at the scene and she can't bite back a few quips when they set her up for them as they run through the scene; she's in a good mood in spite of her gruesome job and she knew she bit their heads off earlier that morning so she makes up for it with sarcasm and small grins before slipping away to talk with the employers of their victim.

But then he's waiting when she gets off the elevator and really it might be worth the paperwork to just go ahead and shoot him – not fatally, he's got a kid after all, but enough to make him think twice about waltzing back into her life.

"Don't look so bitter," he told her with a grin on his face. "Grump all you want but I know you're happy to see me."

"About as happy as I get over a flat tire when I'm running late."

He sighed. "C'mon Beckett. We're fated ones and you can be pissy all you want but you can't ignore that. We're meant for each other."

"Look," she growled as she stepped into his personal space. "I don't give a damn what we are – this is my job and it's not your personal playground. You want to write a book based off me? Fine. But you step into my crime scene then you take it seriously. Understand."

"Perfectly." He doesn't back down, doesn't cower under a glare that can make even Javier Esposito run for cover. She turns on her heel to stalk off toward the crime scene but he caught her wrist and pulled her back. "Detective? Your crime scene's that way."

She doesn't grant him a reply as she strutted past him and knocked on the door, banging her frustration on the wood. "Detective Beckett, NYPD, I need to speak with you about your nanny."

"Richard Castle, just NY," she heard him tell the woman once she stepped into the apartment.

Later that night she sat at her desk and ran a basic background search on her shadow; he had left hours ago, something about tucking his daughter into bed and it's sweet, endearing in a way she doesn't want to think about. Right leg tucked under her left thigh, she hunched over her desk as she poured over all of Richard Castle's dirtiest secrets: stealing a police horse while nude, public intoxication, and a few other misdemeanors that he'd gotten little more than a slap on a wrist for. What caught her attention was the information on his marital status, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of the finalization date of his first divorce. Richard Castle officially ended his marriage to his first wife, Meredith, on November 17th, 1997 on Kate Beckett's eighteenth birthday.

"She cheated on me with her director," he whispered in her ear and she whipped around to find him standing in the dimly lit bullpen with two cups of coffee in hand. He extended one of the drinks to her. "Ryan mentioned that sometimes you stay late to go over the evidence so I checked on Alexis, ate some dinner, and came back."

"Thanks," she whispered as he dropped into the chair next to her desk.

"Any reason you're going over my background check," he asked as he took a sip from his own cup.

She took a pull off her own and furrowed her brow – less than a day and he already has her coffee order down perfectly. "Just curious. She cheated on you?"

"Yeah."

She sighed. "Castle... When did your mark show up?"

"That day, when I was officially free of Meredith," he explained. "Why?"

Her fingers subconsciously found her mark and she rubbed the skin through the thin covering of her shirt. "Mine too."

"Oh."

"It was my eighteenth birthday," she explained quietly. "I was... I was so excited. It woke me out of a dead sleep and I went running through the house to my parents room and woke my mom up to show her."

"You actually looked forward to it then," he gathered. "What happened?"

"Not yet," she told him quietly. "I can't... Not yet."

"Okay," he relented and it was then that she noticed his hand on her arm, hating herself when she pulled away. "Want to run the case again?"

"Yeah," she breathed, grateful for the reprieve.

He was annoying, a nine year old on a sugar rush, but he was also a man who brought her coffee in the middle of the night and understood when she was physically incapable of talking about her past. He was a pain in the ass but, dammit, he was growing on Kate Beckett like a fungus and she wasn't sure she wanted to be rid of him anytime soon.


End file.
